Health Febs: How to Beating the Pregnancy Belly Fat?

This is a subject that is VERY close to home for us - we have a 1 year old and a 3 year old, so we KNOW just how exciting a time it can be to have kids, and keeping control of your weight is the last thing you need to be worried about! By the way - if you think I'm only talking about the ladies here when I say "Pregnancy belly fat" - I'm not! I'm talking about that sympathy pregnancy belly fat too!! The fact is, especially when it's your first baby, it's a stressful time - in fact, I'm surprised you have time to read this article...

But I'm glad you are reading this - I want to share a few things that I have learned over the last four years that will help with your stress level... Before that, I should say that I am NOT a doctor, but we have just been through this ourselves, and we've beaten our share of pregnancy belly fat - if you have health concerns, listen to your doctor, but nothing here should contradict what they are telling you.

First - pregnancy belly fat is all part of the game! So stop beating yourself up about it! No matter how much other people have told you before pregnancy, nothing can really prepare you for the experience. It's an emotional time, as well as a very tiring time - nobody gets enough sleep and then there's all the preparations to worry about, decorating the nursery, getting to check ups, is the bag packed, and so on. This is not the time to add "beat the belly fat" to your personal to-do list! Just enjoy the new parenting experience as much as you can - weight loss can wait!

Second - stop trying to manage your diet! Sure, especially for the new mothers, you need to make sure that you are getting enough nutrients and vitamins, but just listen to your body. So what if it demands a few extra calories every hour or so for a while? - Your body really does know best at this time and a little extra belly fat (and thigh fat and arm fat lol) is all part of the process.

Third - and this is one that I WISH someone had told us before the event - your body does not magically snap back into shape after the baby arrives!! You've just been carrying an extra 8-12 lbs person around for the last nine months and things take a little while to adjust - no matter HOW flat your stomach was beforehand, that bump is not going to disappear overnight. Again - don't sweat it, just listen to your body and give yourself a chance to recover. You're going to have enough to deal with from lack of sleep and the new regime that your baby WILL impose on your life. Now is not the time to start running 5 miles a day!

Fourth - so the baby's here, NOW it must be time to get back to normal right? Wrong! This is a little different for everyone, but again, I have to advise listening to your body! Having a baby is a pretty brutal experience for your body - especially as a lot of people are having them later and later in life - so give yourself a chance to recover. And if you are planning to have your kids close together (as we did, although some people go even closer!) then you might want to just shelve weight loss altogether and concentrate on just surviving for a couple of years! That might sound a bit strong, but I have to say - I don't need a lot of sleep anyway, but having two young kids is relentless - even now they wake up with the sun, and four years of 5-6am starts can get wearing, even once they do sleep through the night.

Finally - the babies are sleeping through the night, nursing is down to a manageable schedule or even finished with and you are starting to feel more human and equipped to face exercise again. At this point, it is very tempting - especially if you were particularly fit beforehand - to launch into a brutal exercise and diet regime. My advice? - Don't do it! You've just been through a traumatic couple of years (in a good way, hopefully, but still traumatic) and you haven't exercised regularly in a while. You are probably heartily sick of carrying that pregnancy belly fat - that's both of you - men get the sympathy belly fat too! - but setting yourself up for failure is not the answer.

Start slowly - a little gentle exercise for 10-20 minutes a day a few times per week can work miracles. But set yourself up for success - don't commit to a 5am run every day and then quit on day 3 - that will just make you feel even worse about yourself. We have a yoga DVD that we work out to - it's a 90 minute DVD and we've only ever made it to 18 minutes so far, but even that 18 minutes is starting to make a big difference. The main thing is that you start to restructure your lifestyle to become the healthy you and then the pregnancy belly fat will become a thing of the past very quickly.

One of the best ways to go about this is to follow a program that has been laid out for you. There are many out there on the internet and elsewhere, but one that I am very excited about is called Strip That Fat - this is a program that can be followed at any level, no matter how fit or unfit you are to start with or how much weight you want to lose, and, because it is a "lifestyle" program, you will be able to keep the weight off long term as well.

Bottom line? Enjoy being pregnant, enjoy your new baby and, when the time is right, enjoy getting back into shape and beating that pregnancy belly fat - and a program like Strip That Fat can only help!

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